The Ardor platform is a flexible, scalable, and progressive multi-blockchain platform that addresses the critical issue of “blockchain bloat,” a well-known phenomenon within the emerging industry of blockchain technologies. The next stage in the evolution of Nxt technologies, as a split from the Nxt platform, the Ardor platform handles the security and processing of its subsequent child-chains, IGNIS and Bitswift, on a 100% proof-of-Stake system that ensures reliability and efficiency for the digital infrastructures of organizations, providing Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) functionality.

Being implemented entirely in Java, the architecture of the Ardor Platform is both complex and multifaceted, and offers users a unique and highly promising opportunity through the inclusion of customizable child-chains, which support an array of features, such as peer-to-peer payments, asset exchange, encrypted messaging, smart contracts, and the bundling system. This mitigates the possibility of downtime and stalled transactions within its network, ensuring a pragmatic and cost-reductive solution to the needs of all businesses, and allows for Ardor token holders to collect fees for the process of forging and bundling of all subsequent child-chains. Ultimately, the Ardor blockchain is a platform that can support an array of services necessary for broad enterprises, such as public entities, consortiums, research institutions, and financial service providers, and shows tremendous promise to the industry.

What defines Ardor as a standout candidate from the many other blockchain platforms is its architecture, and specifically its solution to addressing blockchain bloat, a current nemesis to the mass adoption of blockchain technologies in various sectors. Blockchain bloat occurs due to an overloaded blockchain which becomes heavy with retrospective data as the growth of transactions increases.

An excessive amount of data stores upon the ledger and must be verified entirely with every new transaction. As the size of the chain increases, so does the decentralized ledger, increasing the time it takes for transactions to process through the nodes as these nodes verify consensus.

Ardor solves this issue by implementing the “bundling system.” The bundling system is a unique design that allows for all processing to occur from the child-chains to Ardor, the parent chain, while less pertinent bits of data are pruned from the child-chains and stored as snapshots on archival nodes as manageable bits of data, preserving the historic information and the speed of the network. The result is a functioning, secure, and scalable ecosystem of blockchains that express an enormous capacity for various applications and high volume usage.

The capacity for child-chains on the Ardor platform is another standout feature of its architecture. Child-chains are additional, ready-to-use platforms based on the same code of Ardor that cater to a variety of services, with features such as peer-to-peer payments, asset exchange, encrypted messaging, aliases, anonymous voting, smart contract deployment, and further access to development on the accessible Nxt API, the code’s application program interface. Child-chains, such as IGNIS and Bitswift, are already in existence and mimic the features of the older blockchain platform Nxt, which has proven to be fully functional, secure, and ready for market, and still shows great potential for future enhancements.

As an additional feature of this parent-child chain architecture, all child-chains may exchange their tokens seamlessly within the Ardor ecosystem, allowing independent businesses to exchange data and other assets without delay or compromises to their security, as all transactions will be noted, verified, and stored within the nodes of the parent chain as snapshots stored within archival nodes.

Technology

Ardor is a completely unique blockchain platform written from scratch, much like its predecessor Nxt, which has demonstrated a successful and flexible product from Jelurida’s core development team. At the release of Ardor’s mainnet on January 1st 2018, Ardor will be able to accommodate many child-chains to test the capacity of its scaling, which is solicited to accommodate a significant volume of transactions and support the many needs of various enterprises. The technology of Ardor’s predecessor, Nxt, is currently in use for a variety of businesses, such as BNP Paribas, a major French banking service, and A-Trust for digital identification in Austrian cities. And while these organizations utilize the Nxt codebase for their needs, Jelurida is constantly in reception of its users’ feedback, while propelling the development of this versatile technology forwards to deliver the requests of current and future users. As Ardor is an improvement of Nxt, it would be relatively easy to move to the new chain. Due to the scaling potential of the unique bundler and side-chain chain-structure, the technology has a notable potential for growth and adoption in the years to come as it would be able to accommodate various businesses with its array of features.

Ardor

Coin/Token Use The purpose of Ardor tokens is to pay for the features and services of the Ardor blockchain. These tokens are used to host nodes on the Proof-of-Stake system for the collection of fees from forging new blocks and validating consensus for the parent and subsequent child chains. The process is referred to as “forging.” Ardor tokens may also be used for the process of bundling, where a bundler will collect payment in the form of native child-chain tokens to forge new blocks for the child-chain before using their Ardor tokens to pay for the inclusion of these new blocks onto the Ardor chain, securing the data to the main-chain. As the number of users and child-chains grow within the Ardor ecosystem, so does the value of Ardor tokens for all token holders, bundlers, and forgers. In sum, the possession of Ardor allows for node hosting and fee collection on the parent-chain from child-chains, and can be utilized for a variety of other purposes, such as asset exchange and Cloud storage.Token Distribution Ardor tokens were distributed over a period of several months as multiple snapshots of the NXT chain were taken, providing Ardor tokens to those who held Nxt tokens during that time based upon the average balance of each individual’s wallet at a 1:1 ratio. A total 100% of Ardor tokens are currently in circulation.The TeamJelurida B.V. is a privately owned developer-based company founded in 2016 to develop and manage the Nxt and Ardor platforms and licenses.Kristina Kalcheva Managing Director and Legal Advisor of Jelurida B.V., the developmental team of Nxt technologies. Kalcheva holds a Master of Laws and International Relations Degree from the globally recognized, top ranked higher education facility, Sophia University. She is an experienced legal specialist with seven years of experience as a legal advisor, and has focused the last two years on the legal challenges pertaining to blockchain technology.Lior Yaffe Core Developer, Managing Director, and Co-Founder of Jelurida B.V. A computational prodigy from childhood, Yaffe has dedicated the entirety of his academic and professional career to technological development, and has now applied that experience to the sole development of promising blockchain technologies. With a terrific reputation in the industry, Yaffe has had many professional successes working with the award-winning software firm Jacada Incorporated before co-founding Jelurida B.V.Petko Petkov Software Developer at Jelurida B.V. He has an extensive history in an array of developmental languages and leadership positions within significant team-based projects. Holding a Master’s degree in E-Business and E-Governance from Sophia University, Petkov has demonstrated exceptional talent and delivery for over a decade in his career portfolio, working for businesses such as Gameloft, an award winning video game developer and subsidiary of Vivendi, a French multimedia conglomerate.Tomislav Gountchev Leading Software Architect of Jelurida B.V., with an extensive and successful professional history at such entities as Hippo, Nextag, and eBay. Gountchev demonstrates an exemplary and versatile track record both professionally, as a software engineer for over a decade at large corporations, handling an array of projects that yield relevant expertise to his aims now at Jelurida, and academically, holding a PhD in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.Summary Ardor is a significant BaaS platform that adds a variety of useful features to the blockchain model, and addresses the key issues of scalability and use-case for adoption and integration of its technology into business. The ability to create child-chains with customisable feature-sets for a business’ specific needs gives Ardor an edge over its competition, although it is not alone completely alone in offering this. Simple Token is a recently released token which gives similar options. However, they lack their own blockchain and do not feature all the functionalities that Ardor does. For more information on Simple Token, I suggest reading our full report on it. KMD and NEO are the established blockchain projects that are likely to be Ardor’s biggest competitors in the current space due to the similarities between their solutions. The exact overlap is something that could be explored at a later date. With that said, Ardor’s unique system gives different business the possibility to easily exchange information and assets between them, while relying on the parent-chain for security. This, along with the customisability, creates a flexible system that can adapt to the need of the many, which gives it a bright future that is ready for adoption. As the main-net is just about to launch the Ardor platform have yet to see large-scale adoption and is therefore untested in its promises. The coming months are going to be crucial for Ardor as it needs to prove exactly how it will handle the scaling. If it is not able to entice users to its platform, then we might never see the true potential of this blockchain. However, with the increased attention on blockchain technology it is very likely that there will be no shortage in the coming months. As Nxt is already proven to work, Ardor is likely to take it a step further. The first half of 2018 is going to be very interesting for Ardor as it deploys its main-net and brings users to its platform, but with a proper use for the main-token as well as the child-chain, IGNIS, this project has a very positive outlook.News & Resources This coming January, the Ardor mainnet will be released to the public for open-sourced development on the subsequent child-chains. Additionally, the first child-chain of Ardor, IGNIS, will be in effect after a snapshot of the Nxt blockchain on the 28th of December. All token holders of NXT will be awarded a single IGNIS for every two NXT tokens possessed. With this distribution of IGNIS, all NXT holders will be encouraged (through the distribution of Ardor from snapshots of NXT wallets) to integrate themselves onto the new child-chain platform of Ardor, with all the same features as the previous blockchain. We will see an increase of value for both Ardor and IGNIS as traffic moves into both platforms, platforms that support the same functions held previously by Nxt. There is constant exploration occurring to test the deployment of the Ardor blockchain in a variety of areas. Three months ago, Jelurida announced collaborative projects with the Center for Applied Game Studies at Danube University Krems, a leading university for fields of postgraduate education in Austria, about deploying the Ardor platform for uses in gaming and business management due to its great accessibility. Jelurida has recently announced an Ardor-based, euro pegged child-chain called “AEUR,” allowing for companies and individuals to easily interact with the Ardor and child-chain ecosystem. Note: by “pegged,” this means each AEUR will always equal exactly 1 euro. There are additional projects announced in the Nxt forum.Disclaimer:All content provided by IRG is purely observational and should not be considered financial advice. IRG is not an investment group, but a research group that meticulously scans the market for those projects deemed to have the most potential. Cryptoassets are subject to high market volatility and risk, invest responsibly at your own risk. Seek a licensed professional before making any investments. For the latest from Ironwood, subscribe at Ironwood Research Group to receive all of our technical reports, one-page overviews, and weekly market updates before anyone else.

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